Abstract: Billy Brown Olive of Durham, N.C., is a North Carolina attorney who specializes in patent and intellectual property law. In 1957, he established Olive & Olive, the first patent law firm to serve the Research Triangle Park area, and taught proprietary and engineering law classes at the Duke School of Engineering and the School of Product Design at North Carolina State University. For more than 40 years, Olive was involved in civic affairs, specifically those relating to the environment and environmental racism. Locally, he was involved in the opposition to specific routes of Interstate 40 in Orange County, N.C., serving as coordinator with Opposition to I-40 in Orange County. He also opposed the Eubanks Road landfill site in Orange County, N.C. and the East/West Expressway route through the historically African American Crest Street community in Durham, N.C. The collection includes materials on environmental and social issues of interest to Billy Brown Olive, specifically his opposition to the Interstate 40 construction through Orange County, N.C.; the proposed landfill site near Eubanks Road in Orange County; and the proposed extension of the East/West Expressway (North Carolina Highway 147) through the historically African American Crest Street community in Durham, N.C. Interstate 40 papers consist of Olive’s office files related to Interstate 40 construction through North Carolina, including correspondence, meeting minutes of the North Carolina Department of Transportation, newspaper clippings, maps of routes, and petitions. Landfill site materials relate to the proposed placement of an Orange County landfill near Eubanks Road in Orange County, and include court documents, letters of opposition written by Olive, newspaper clippings, landfill drawings, and publications and reports. Crest Street papers include correspondence; court documents, specifically those related to the Save Our Church and Community Committee of Durham; maps of Duke Forest; publications and reports; and additional correspondence relating to I-40 construction in Durham. Also included is material related to the Orange County Municipal Waste Project, chiefly consisting of correspondence of Olive with state and local officials, newspaper staff, educators, and the Landfill Owners Group, but also including studies and reports on waste management. There are a few related photographs scattered throughout the collection.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: A number of the communities Mr. Olive worked with are African American, including the community on Crest Street. Series 3 contains correspondence, maps, and court proceedings relating to stopping the expansion of Interstate 40 through the Crest Street neighborhood.

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: Interview, conversation and narrative in Gullah dialect by African Americans Jim and Christina Milligan and Nettie Whaley, recorded by Herman Bell on Edisto Island, South Carolina in 1967. Topics include the Civil War, houses, food, fishing, school, local people, and some animal tales. [1 reel, FT1200]

Abstract: Family correspondence, chiefly 1840-1854, and other papers of Henry McCall Holmes (1790-1854), a physician of Charleston and Greenville districts, S.C.; of his wife, Eliza Ford (Gibbes) Holmes; of their daughter, Emma Edwards Holmes (1838-1910); and of their sons, Wilmot Stuart Holmes and Henry M. Holmes. Included are Mrs. Holmes’s business papers, 1854-1876, and estate book, 1854-1857, as executrix of her husband’s estate, and correspondence with her father W. S. Gibbes, with her King and DeSaussure family relatives, and with Daniel Heyward; correspondence, chiefly 1864-1875, between brothers Wilmot, a commission merchant in Charleston, S.C., and Henry, a physician in Silver Springs, Fla., and Limestone Springs, S.C.; pocket account books, 1861-1874; journal, 1850, of a trip from Charleston to Wilmington, N.C., Washington, D.C., and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia; notebook, 1876, and diary, 1861-1866, of Emma Holmes while she was in Charleston (microfilm); and recollections of the Gibbes family of Charleston during the Revolution, and of the Garden family during the early Republic. Earliest papers consist of deeds, indentures, bills, and receipts. Later material consists of scattered Holmes and Pasteur family items. Also included is a letter, 1912, on the phonetics of the Cherokee language.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:  Includes correspondence in Series 1  on a bond given by Daniel Heyward before the Civil War for payment for a group of slaves, and subsequent discussions bout dealing with this debt.

Reminisces by Emma Holmes also discusses the tornado in Charleston, 1811, which tore down a whole corner of the DeSaussure house, pinning Anna under furniture close to the spot where a enslaved maid was completely crushed (See Folder 15).

Volume 3 contains an inventory of enslaved people owned by Henry Holmes, as well as other possessions (Folder 17).

Abstract: Stuart A. Marks, professor of anthropology and environmental sciences at St. Andrews College, Laurinburg, N.C. Audio tapes and typed transcripts of oral history interviews conducted by Stuart A. Marks in the course of preparing Southern Hunting in Black and White and other volumes. The interviews, dating from the 1970s and early 1980s, are chiefly with North Carolina hunters. There are approximately eighty-five tapes. Also included are research notes and other materials, chiefly relating to hunting.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Included in the collection are interviews with African American hunters.

Abstract: John Milliken Parker (1863-1939) was governor of Louisiana, 1920-1924; member of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange and the New Orleans Board of Trade, the Southern Commercial Congress, and the Mississippi Valley Trade Association; and a national leader of the Progressive Party. The collection consists of papers, chiefly 1909-1920, pertaining to Parker’s business activities, including his membership on the New Orleans Board of Trade and the New Orleans Cotton Exchange; his association with the Progressive Party; his management of the Federal Food Administration program in Louisiana during World War I; his term as governor, 1920-1924; and his service as relief administrator during the Mississippi River flood of 1927 (including photographs, some of which depict African Americans). Other topics include the Southern Commercial Congress and opposition to Huey P. Long.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Special highlight is Photograph Album PA-1184/1-2 which depicts pictures of the Mississippi River flood of 1927, including images of refugees, many of whom were African American; rescue efforts; stranded livestock; and homes, buildings, roads, and railroads under water. (from Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, etc.)

Abstract: The Delta Health Center was established in the mid-1960s, in the rural, all-African American town of Mound Bayou, Bolivar County, Miss., and served Bolivar, Coahoma, Sunflower, and Washington counties, where poverty was widespread. The Center, which was federally funded through Tufts University and later through the State University of New York at Stony Brook, was one of the first community health centers in the United States. The comprehensive community health center model aimed at building upon traditional health services by addressing the underlying causes of illness, including economic, environmental, and social factors. Originally, Jack Geiger served as project director and John Hatch as director of community health action. The collection contains business files documenting the establishment and operations of the Delta Health Center, including the efforts of John Hatch, Jack Geiger, and others to obtain and maintain federal funding for the Center from the Office of Economic Opportunity; the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; and the Department of Health and Human Services. Major topics include health care for minorities and impoverished communities, social medicine, nutrition, environmental health, and medical education and training. Materials document the economic, social, and health conditions of the residents of the Mississippi Delta, especially the African American community in northern Bolivar County; John Hatch and L. C. Dorsey’s efforts with the North Bolivar County Cooperative Farm and Cannery; the role of the North Bolivar County Health and Civic Improvement Council; and the Delta Health Center’s relationship with other health facilities, medical schools, and outreach programs, including the Mound Bayou Community Hospital (with which it merged in 1972), Meharry Medical College, the Delta Ministry, and the Columbia Point Health Center (now the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center), and others. Included are administrative records, correspondence, financial materials, grant proposals, legal materials, personnel files, reports, studies, education and training materials, publicity materials, photographs, printed matter, and other items. Of note are newspaper articles, protest photographs, and other items related to Mississippi Governor Bill Waller’s vetos of the Delta Community Health Center and Hospital’s federal funding, and photographs of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights marches in March 1965. Audio recordings include speeches of and interviews with persons connected with the Delta Health Center, among them director Andrew James. Also included is a recording of Stokeley Carmichael speaking at North Carolina Central University in March 1970 and a recording of a 1968 speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at the Delta Ministry’s Mount Beulah Conference Center in Edwards, Miss.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Subseries 1.1 documents the origins of Delta Health Center. Of particular note in Box 1 is documentation in a Folder entitled “Background: Delta White Community, 1966-1970” that includes letters to Delta Health Center director Andrew James and Deputy Director David Weeks, among others, regarding the economic boycott against white merchants in Rosedale, Miss., held by the local African American community in protest of their poor living conditions in 1970. Box 6 also contains folders related to the boycott.

Box 2 contains articles, pamphlets, and printed materials from 1963 to 1971 on a variety of topics including socioeconomic conditions and education for African Americans, health conditions in Mississippi, nutrition, legal issues, Medicaid, and medical doctors in Mississippi, with a few items published by the Delta Health Center.

Subseries 1.2 contains information on the town of Mound Bayou and the merger of Delta Health with the local hospital, among other topics. Also of note are materials regarding the treatment of African Americans in health care facilities and the socioeconomic stratification between races in Mississippi, found in the “Office of Economic Opportunity documents,” ” Mississippi data,” and “North Bolivar County Civic and Health Improvement Council” files (See Box 6,7, and 11 particularly).

Box 22 in Subseries 1.4, has a  number of letters of support written by residents of Mound Bayou.

Box 39 in Subseries 1.5 contains a flyer and a book list for the Food Co-op’s African American bookstore.

Box 48 in Subseries 1.6 includes field research, observations, and statistics on health, housing, lifestyle of communities primarily in Durban, South Africa. Materials appear to be associated with Jack Geiger’s involvement with the Department of Preventative and Family Medicine at the University of Natal. Gieger got the idea to bring community center health model to the U.S. from his time in South Africa.

There are also a number of materials related to the protest of Governor William Wallers’s attempt to veto federal funding for the center. Box 55 contains articles, pamphlets, and other publicity materials related to this topic.

Photographs in Subseries 1.8 include images from the Selma to Montgomery voting right marches in Alabama in 1965.  Images are of a police barricade, marchers lined up on the highway, several men carrying a woman who has fainted or been injured, amputee marcher Jim Leatherer standing by a bonfire, and Martin Luther King Jr. delivering a speech at the Alabama State Capitol at the conclusion of the final march (See Image Box IB 4163/1).

Audio recordings include a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at the Delta Ministry’s Mount Beulah Conference Center in Edwards, Miss., on 16 February 1968. (See Audiotape T-4613/23), and a speech by Stokeley Carmichael (Kwame Ture) at North Carolina Central University in Durham in 1970 (See T-4613/25).

 

Abstract: Field notes and related items produced between 1945 and 1957 by researchers in a project sponsored by the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina. The notes were made during anthropological field work among residents of Avery County, N.C.; Brewton, Selma, and Camden, Ala.; and York County, S.C. Areas explored included technology, housing, food, labor, religion, community structure, and folklore.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Includes research notes from Hylan Lewis, a young African American sociologist who studied African American residents of Kent, South Carolina as part of a larger research project (See Box 6).

There is also a copy of Lewis published research, entitled Blackways of Kent. (See the volume in Series 3).

Abstract: The Penn School on Saint Helena Island, S.C., was founded during the Civil War by northern philanthropists and missionaries for former plantation slaves in an area occupied by the United States Army. Over the years, with continuing philanthropic support, it served as school, health agency, and cooperative society for rural African Americans of the Sea Islands. The first principals were Laura M. Towne and Ellen Murray, followed around 1908 by Rossa B. Cooley and Grace B. House, and in 1944 by Howard Kester and Alice Kester. The school became Penn Community Services in 1950, with Courtney Siceloff as the first director, and the Penn Center, Inc. in the 1980s. The original deposits are papers, mostly 1900-1970, mainly from the Penn School, and primarily correspondence of the directors and of the trustees, treasurers, and publicity workers located elsewhere. Topics include African American education, Reconstruction, political and social change in South Carolina, agricultural extension work, public health issues, damage from hurricanes, World War I, the boll weevil and the cotton industry, the effects of the Great Depression on the school and the local population, changes in the school leading to a greater emphasis on social action in the outer world, and the end of the school and the turn to community service. Volumes include diaries, extracts from letters, recollections, minutes of the board of trustees, ledgers, cashbooks, inventories, financial records, registers of students and teachers, and minutes of various clubs and societies. Printed materials consists of newspapers clippings, pamphlets, promotional literature, school materials, administrative circulars, and annual reports. There are also about 3,000 photographs in the collection, dating from the 1860s to 1962 (bulk 1905-1944), documenting school activities, Island scenes and Islanders, classes and teachers, baptisms, agricultural activities, parades, fairs, and special events at the Penn School. Also included are about 300 audiotapes with oral history interviews and recordings of community acivities, 1954-1979. The Addition of 2005, contains papers of Courtney Siceloff, director of Penn Community Services, 1950-1970, and secretary of the South Carolina Advisory Committee of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, circa 1960-1970. Penn Community Services materials are chiefly administrative and financial. Material relating to the United States Commission on Civil Rights and its state advisory committees, especially the South Carolina Advisory Committee, includes some information about specific discrimination cases.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Administrative correspondence and records of Penn Normal Industrial and Agricultural School, a school for black students established in 1862 on St. Helena Island, South Carolina. The collection also contains material on Penn School’s successor, Penn Community Services, which commenced its activities in 1948. Materials include approximately 3,000 photographs of students, teachers, school buildings, school events, and island life and inhabitants (1860s-1962). Numerous volumes include trustee minutes; account books and inventories; school and community club records; and guest books. The collection also includes diaries and papers of Laura M. Towne, founder of the school, and of others associated with the area in the 1860s. Microfilm available.

The Penn School papers cover myriad topics such as enslavement, education, agriculture, environmental conditions, family, social justice, Gullah/Geechee heritage, and Civil Rights, to name a few.

Of particular interest in the diary of Laura Towne, one of the first principles of Penn School (Folder 355a-b). She discusses life during the establishment of the school and interactions with the African American community, as well as with Union and Confederate Soldiers coming to St. Helena Island.

The printed materials in Series 3 also contain numerous annual reports, including reports from African American teachers at the school.

Of particular interest are the more than 3,000 photographs that are in the collection. They document Penn from its earliest days as a school in the 19th century, to the shift from Penn Community Services during the 1950s. The people and landscape of Saint Helena are prominently featured. Many of the images have been digitized and are available online. Click here to link the finding aid and to access the digitized content.